Levels can be set in an alarm template to monitor a parameter, such as warning, minor, major, critical (high and low).
There is also the "normal" level and I'm wondering what the practical use is of filling in something in that field?
-When specifying a warning high of 3 (or another high level of 3) without filling in anything in the normal then as soon as the value goes below 3, the alarm severity is normal. When specifying something in the normal level, such as 1, then for a value of 2 the severity will still be normal. If there is minor low specified of -3 and minor high of +3 (no warning specified) then the severity will be normal when value > -3 and value < 3, regardless of the value in the normal level.
-When using a discreet value: if I have possibilities "A" and "B" and I set "B" as critical then value "A" automatically has the normal alarm severity, regardless whether "A" is or isn't specified in the normal level of the alarm template.
-When working with normalization, then the normal level contains [BASELINE] indication, but this could also be derived by looking at the type to know if normalization is used.
This makes me wonder if there is a use case where it does matter that something is filled in in the normal level of an alarm template?
For parameters displayed as measurement type analog, you can see it does make a difference when you specify the normal threshold. This normal value is visible on the component.
This can be an indication of your base expectations of "Normal". (In this case "Normal" is set to 40%, while everything below 50% will actually be in severity Normal)
I tested the exception values in DataMiner 10.0.9 and they are automatically having a normal severity. Numeric parameter with exception value 10, Alarm template configuration: critical high 6, nothing specified as normal. When setting value 7, I get a critical alarm, when setting value 10 it displays the exception value with normal severity (alarm is cleared). The behavior has been changed since RN 1620, that RN states that if the exception value is not specified in the alarm template that it should be interpreted as normal, before the RN the exception value was interpreted as a plain value that followed the config.
It is exactly the way Thijs explained it. The normal value is not required to determine whether a metric is not in an alarm state (i.e. the state of a metric is always automatically considered not in alarm (green) whenever an alarm state is effectively defined on that metric and it doesn't meet the alarm condition), but it is useful to provide an optional graphical indication for the user on analog readings as to which value is typically to be expected (i.e. it is marked at that specific point with a small green marker).
Another possible use is to have exception values (e.g. “Not Available”) show up as “normal” even though they are in e.g. a critical range.